


you will greet yourself arriving

by possibilityleft



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Bodily Fluids, Canon Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen, Minor Character Death, Poison, Pre-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 10:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10333076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/pseuds/possibilityleft
Summary: Taako flees Glamour Springs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I Googled arsenic poisoning and nightshade poisoning and pretty much the bloody barf is all they have in common, so I'm sorry. 
> 
> Title is from Derek Walcott's [Love After Love](https://m.poemhunter.com/poem/love-after-love/), which is a Taako poem if I've ever read one.

"Drive!" Taako screamed, running towards the wagon, and Sazed didn't hesitate. He flicked the reins hard and the horses broke out into an almost immediate gallop. Taako grabbed onto the back of the wagon at the very last minute, his entire body jarred by the impact. Later he'd realize he'd chipped a tooth, but he didn't notice the pain then. 

He hauled himself into the covered back, tripping over jars and sacks in his haste, spilling salt onto the boards. The wagon nearly struck a woman crossing the wide cobbled road as they fled, but Taako barely saw her. His entire body was on fire with terror and disgust. 

He dove into the stores like an elf possessed, grabbing jars and packets and produce that was now rolling around in the back of the cart. Sazen always tied everything down nicely before they left; it was part of the comfortable, slow process of leaving that Taako always largely ignored. He was always scribbling out recipes on slips of paper or signing autographs while the business of packing was performed in his periphery. He didn't worry about his ingredients or equipment much until they rolled into the next town and he had to get ready for the performance.

He couldn't find the jar of elderberry garnish. He'd found the remains of the chicken -- feathers scattered over the floor, for the most part, since it had been freshly killed as part of the demonstration. There were four more heads of garlic tucked carefully into a thickly woven sack, all of which they'd bought only a week ago. They shedded their papery skins under his fingers and revealed no flaws. The same was true for the onions. What remained of the butter pat was safe in its cold chest, and he saw no hints of rancidity. But he couldn't find the damn garnish. He picked up a jar of peach preserves for the third damn time when it rolled into his foot, and threw it out the back of the wagon. It burst in the road behind them, striking a rock and shattering. He ignored the shard that flew back into the wagon, raising a line of blood on his wrist, and kept digging.

The horses weren't elven horses -- just good sturdy farm stock he'd bought a year ago when he'd gotten the wagon painted. They couldn't keep the pace Sazed had set, and after a period of time, far too short, they slowed to a walk. Taako threw a bag of flour out of the wagon and immediately regretted it. It would be too easy to track them this way. He might as well go turn them in if he was going to leave a trail like that. He lifted his wand and cast fire with a trembling hand, watching the flames flare up and then die quickly, leaving only a small mark. Then he strode to the front of the wagon and peered his head out, taking stock.

The horses were lathered and one was limping. They'd have to get new ones at the next settlement, and he'd have to pay dearly, too, because he wasn't sticking around to negotiate a better deal. Sazed was looking back at him with a concerned expression, his hands tight on the rein.

"Sir?" he said. He had a smear of some old foodstuff on his apron, which he was still wearing, given their haste. Taako's gaze fastened on it, but somehow his eyes refused to properly focus, and the image wavered.

"Sir?" Sazed said again, and Taako threw up over the side of the wagon. For a moment he was sure, and almost grateful, that he'd been affected too, but he didn't remember tasting the chicken. He usually sampled as he demonstrated, but he'd made thirty-clove garlic chicken so many times that thinking of it would raise the tart taste in his mouth. He threw up bile, but nothing else.

"We should go back and get a doctor," Sazed said, and Taako wiped his mouth and shouted, "Drive!"

Sazed turned back to the road and flicked the reins again. The horses rolled their eyes, but increased their clip. This was bad for the limping one, Taako knew, but he didn't have any healing magic. What was a horse now, anyway? Worth more than the people he'd left behind there, poisoned? The people he'd murdered? 

He'd been so pleased to see the size of the crowd, had counted them twice, crowing to himself about his increasing fame. When they'd rolled into town that morning, several people had already heard of him -- one older woman boasted she was seeing his show for the third time. He'd signed her wide-brimmed hat, which he'd later seen clutched in one hand as she vomited red blood. Her wife had a hand on her back, clearly concerned, but her pale face suggested she'd soon be throwing up herself. They'd all taken samples. Taako had turned a blind eye to the raggedly child who had taken two, one from each side of the table as if Taako wouldn't notice that way. If he had leftovers at the end of the night, he always left them out for anybody to take, anyway. The child had already been glassy-eyed, wobbling on his feet, when Taako pushed out of the tent. Someone was screaming, and then they stopped abruptly. He'd stood there too long in their midst, long enough to see a man fall, clutching at his heart, and then another person spilled into the dirt, smelling of shit and seizing.

Someone clutched desperately at his ankle and that was when he'd started yelling for Sazed to get the wagon, they had to go. They'd left in a bit of a hurry a few times before, over lesser offenses -- Taako's constant petty thievery, jealous spouses, bad crowds -- but there had always been time before to take the tent down and grab the demonstration table. He'd never been thrown out of a town, not since he'd had enough money for his own wagon. Town mayors found him charming.

Taako didn't remember climbing back under the wagon canvas after shouting at Sazed, but he was there, sprawled in the corner where they usually kept grain for the horses. He suddenly found himself almost at a remove from the situation, like he was watching it happen to somebody else. What did they do next? How would they solve something like this on Fantasy CSI? He knew somewhere in his mind that he was probably in shock, but he welcomed the numbness. He needed to be able to think.

His fucking face was on the side of the wagon, and his name too. That had to go first. He stumbled to his feet and made it to the back of the wagon so he could lean out and look at the canvas. His own face grinned back at him, giant and perfect. He'd driven the painter crazy, criticizing every imperfection. Taako was still holding onto his wand somehow, even though his hand was shaking like leaves in a stiff breeze, and he directed his magic in the direction of the wagon cover. He missed entirely the first time, and the second effort simply burned a cigar-sized hole in the canvas. The third took, and now the wagon, a dull brown color, now read Sazed and Sons Tannery. He drew the back of the canvas down to cover as much of the contents of the wagon as possible and transmuted a few ingredients at random to smell pungently of urine and hides. No one would want to get too close. The smell made him want to throw up again. He pushed through the wagon to the front.

"Okay, okay, okay," he said, and the detached part of him marveled at the calmness in his voice. "So here's the story. We're tanners. I'm your son… In-law. That's the only way this is believable. We're tanners, we know nothing about cooking, our enormous, hearty wives do all the cooking for us. We're on our way back home with our disgusting burden to go back to our boring lives. That's all we know. We've never even heard of Taako."

Sazed turned back and blanched when he saw the disguised wagon. "You put my name on it!" he said, his voice high and panicked. "What did you do? What the hell did you do, Taako?"

"No one knows your name, dummy!" Taako answered him. "Fuck, call me, uh, Travis. That's a tanner name, right? And take off that fucking apron! Take it off!"

He was screaming back again. Sazed threw down the reins, stood up, and pulled off the apron, tossing it off the side of the wagon before sitting down again. He didn't take his eyes off Taako the whole time.

"What did you do?" he repeated.

"I fucked it up, Pops," Taako answered, diving back into the wagon for the horse blanket and wrapping it around himself. He turned his hat inside out, even though he knew he was ruining the shape of it, and pulled his hair into a messy bun which he tucked inside of the hat.

"How far until our next stop?" he asked.

"It was half a day's ride at a normal pace," Sazed said, looking ahead through the narrow path that cut through the trees. They'd long since left cobblestones behind. Taako's ears twitched as he listened for possible strange hooves on the the path. "Probably two hours," Sazed concluded after another moment's consideration. "I grew up around here."

"Perfect. In one hour, let's ditch the cart and we can come into town on horses."

"Horse," Sazed said. "You'll be lucky if Misty makes another hour."

"Horse. Fine. I don't care. You can ride it," Taako answered. He dove back into the wagon and began going methodically through his hiding spots, disarming traps and pushing the hidden buttons, pulling out coins from each and shoving them into a burlap bag. "We'll get new ones there that should last us a few more days. I've got enough money for that."

"What did you do?" Sazed said.

"The fucking elderberries," Taako said, his voice wobbly. "It must have been -- what else? I just killed a whole lot of people with fucking _chicken_. Oh, we're so, so fucked." Taako's knees stopped working and the rest of his body followed. He slumped onto the floor of the wagon, and every inch of him hurt then.

Sazed was quiet. Taako watched the villagers die again in his head.

"We were at the convention," Sazed said finally.

"What?"

"Every spring, the tanners have a convention in a little town near Glamour Springs. I told you, I'm from around here. We'd smell them coming both ways. You did good with the stench, by the way. Very authentic."

"Some of it is probably real pee," Taako admitted, but he was bolstered by Sazed's cooperation. They made it through the next little settlement without incident, renting a pair of horses from a local hostler who told them he charged extra for cleaning, wrinkling his nose at their cover story. Taako was able to fumble around and remove the enchantment from the beasts once they got a few miles out of town, and those horses took them all the way to the coast of a large river. They followed the river south for a few days until they reached a city far enough away and large enough that Taako felt they could get lost in it for a while.

He was right. He woke up on the second day they'd been in the city with a serious headache, half in the gutter, his bag of gold gone. Sazed hadn't left a note, but he had at least left Taako his wand, most likely because Taako was keeping it strapped to his leg most of the time. An elf wizard was more memorable than an elf who wasn't a wizard, he had reasoned, and he was trying not to be memorable.

Well, it wasn't the first time he'd woken up in a gutter, he thought, and likely wouldn't be the last. He couldn't even be mad. If it had been him in Sazed's position, he probably would have already turned himself in. At least Sazed had left him alive and not in prison. Taako had started from nothing before. He could do it again. This time, he'd happily settle for obscurity.


End file.
